$200,000 Bail in Assault Case for Brother of 'Megan's Law' Killer

By ROBERT HANLEY

Published: March 27, 1998

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., March 26—
Nine months after his brother Jesse was convicted of murdering Megan Kanka in 1994 and sentenced to death, Paul Timmendequas was brought to court in manacles today to answer charges that he had molested a 15-year-old relative in her bed and sexually assaulted a friend's 12-year-old stepdaughter.

Mr. Scully, a deputy public defender, asked Judge Figarotta not to allow the notoriety of Jesse K. Timmendequas -- whose crimes led to a nationwide movement for passage of public alerts about the names and addresses of sex offenders, known as ''Megan's Law'' -- to influence his consideration of Paul's bail.

Outside the court later, Mr. Scully said that if his client's name had been Paul Smith, the acting Middlesex County prosecutor, Robert H. Corbin, would probably have sent a subordinate to represent the state at today's brief bail hearing and that few reporters would have been interested in attending.

Mr. Corbin said at a news conference that his office would treat the case no differently than any other case. But he said he had decided to disclose Paul Timmendequas's arrest at an evening news conference on Wednesday because ''we knew there'd be a lot of interest.''

The two girls were assaulted, Mr. Corbin said, between 2 and 3 A.M. on Monday in a home in East Brunswick where Mr. Timmendequas was invited to live three months ago. The older victim, whom Mr. Corbin described as a ''blood relative'' of Mr. Timmendequas, moved into the home two or three weeks ago.

Citing the 15-year-old's privacy rights, Mr. Corbin refused to describe how she was related to Mr. Timmendequas. He also declined to say where she had been living before she moved in this month with Mr. Timmendequas, his friend, the friend's wife and the friend's stepdaughter and stepson.

Mr. Corbin said the two girls were awakened by the assaults as they slept in separate bedrooms early Monday. The assault on the younger girl involved penetration, Mr. Corbin said. Mr. Timmendequas was charged with aggravated sexual assault and endangering the welfare of a minor in that incident.

The attack on the older girl involved groping, Mr. Corbin said. The charges stemming from that incident, he said, are aggravated criminal sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a minor.

The four charges carry a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison, Mr. Corbin said.

It remained unclear today if the East Brunswick police had been notified immediately after the assaults. Mr. Corbin said his office was first told of the incidents Wednesday by New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services, which deals with abused and troubled children.

On Wednesday afternoon, the prosecutor said, his detectives and East Brunswick police officers picked Mr. Timmendequas up at a ''facility'' in downtown New Brunswick and brought him in for questioning. He was formally charged and arrested about 5 P.M. that day.

Mr. Corbin declined to comment on reports in The Newark Star-Ledger that the two girls were reluctant to press charges against Mr. Timmendequas and that he had checked himself into a mental health clinic after the incidents at his friends' home. The prosecutor also refused to say if the ''facility'' where the police located Mr. Timmendequas Wednesday afternoon was a mental health clinic.

At Jesse Timmendequas's trial last year in the murder of Megan Kanka, 7, in Hamilton Township, Paul Timmendequas testified, via videotape, about their tortured childhood at the hands of an incestuous and abusive father and an indifferent, hard-drinking mother. In the 13-minute tape, Paul said that he and Jesse had been sexually assaulted regularly in their pre-teen years by their father, who went then by the name of Charles W. Timmendequas.

Defense lawyers had introduced the tape in hopes of convincing a jury that Jesse Timmendequas's pedophilia stemmed from his troubled childhood and that because of it, he should be sentenced to life in prison instead of death. After the jury watched the tape, which was made in 1995, detectives testified that Paul Timmendequas had recanted and told them that his story about an abused childhood was false. The jury later imposed the death sentence, and Jesse Timmendequas is now on death row in New Jersey.

The father, who now goes by the name Edward James Howard and lives in the California desert, also denied Paul's allegations.

Mr. Corbin said his detectives knew little about Paul Timmendequas's movements in recent years.

In 1988, records show, he was arrested in Somerset County, N.J., on charges of selling undercover detectives a half-gram of cocaine within 1,000 yards of a school. He was sentenced to five years in that case and was imprisoned from March 1989 to October 1990, when he was paroled.

He moved a little later to South Carolina, where he is thought to have relatives, and worked there in a steel factory in Columbia while completing his parole, records show.

On Monday, several hours after the alleged assaults, he began a new job as a warehouse worker at Strauss Discount Auto, an auto-parts supply company, in South River, N.J. Officials there said today that Mr. Timmendequas had not reported to work on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Mr. Timmendequas and his ex-wife, Leeann Mather, have a teen-age daughter, Stephanie, who was born in 1982, according to New Jersey court records. The name Stephanie is tattooed in green script on Mr. Timmendequas's right forearm.

Photo: Paul Timmendequas has been charged in New Jersey with sexual assaults on two girls. (Pool photo by Dick Costello)